


It should not mean that much to me

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 17:11:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10858428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: Catelyn, in the earliest days of her life as Princess of Dragonstone.





	It should not mean that much to me

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this aaages ago, and never posted it here - so here we are. Maybe someday it'll get a follow up.
> 
> Title from _Oh Woman Oh Man_ by London Grammar

**I.**

“She will have to do, I suppose,” Brandon Stark says, not speaking to any Tully but loud enough to be heard by them all the same. Catelyn bristles, ready to come to Lysa’s defence, but Uncle Brynden stills her with a hand on her arm. 

“He is young, and a fool,” Uncle Brynden says, not speaking to any Stark but loud enough to be heard by them all the same. “He will come to see your sister’s value - his pride is smarting hard enough to blind him, just yet.”

**II.**

_“You will be queen!”_ Lysa had gasped, and Cat wishes she could have shared her sister’s excitement. “ _You can do whatever you want now, and Father cannot stop you!”_

She wonders what it is that Lysa wants so badly, and thinks that it must not be very important - Lysa is only four-and-ten, after all, and knows her own mind as little as Cat did hers at that age. 

**III.**

No one in all of King’s Landing even pretends to like her, and Cat tries very hard not to mind.

She at least has Uncle Brynden, a whitecloak now instead of a black fish, and the Queen has a kind heart, under all the hurt, and that will do her to start.

She would like a friend, though. Just one.

**IV.**

Elia Hightower, a princess by birth who gave up her title when she married her doting husband, smiles like a naked sword.

“You spared me a very different fate, when you appeared at that tourney and so charmed the Prince,” Lady Elia says, toying with the heavy pendant hanging around her neck - it is rose gold, and never out of her hand for long enough for Cat to see its shape. “For that, I owe you a great debt.”

Baelor Hightower’s smile is as bright as his new wife’s is sharp, when he comes to collect her from Cat’s rooms, but his eyes watch carefully, and Cat is very glad that she has made friends of them, rather than enemies.

**V.**

“You are here,” the Queen says, in her lilting voice, more accented than it ought to be, with flavours of Dorne and echoes of the Westerlands, “to learn what it is to be a Princess, before you wed my son.”

Cat is seven-and-ten, nearly, has been at court near half a year and will wed Prince Rhaegar after the rest of that year has passed, and this is the first time the Queen has mentioned any of this to her. 

“I have kept Riverrun in my mother’s stead since her death,” she ventures. “Surely it isn’t so very different, Princess of Dragonstone instead of Lady of Riverrun?”

The Queen laughs, without malice, and Cat feels very foolish.

**VI.**

She sees Prince Rhaegar only very infrequently, because he spends so much time on Dragonstone, or at Summerhall.

“Perhaps I might join him,” Cat says to the Queen. “We could bring some companions, make an occasion of it.”

“Leave him to his brooding,” the Queen says, “and he may grow out of it before your wedding, my dear.”

The Queen sometimes calls Cat _daughter,_ and has suggested that she might call the Queen _mother_ in return, but it feels disloyal, even with all the kindness the Queen has shown her.

**VII.**

She stays close to the back, when the King sits at court, and avoids the throne room altogether when Lord Tywin deigns to sit in the King’s place. She is not sure which scares her more, and is not sure which of them is more likely to do her harm.

She says this only to Uncle Brynden, and only to him when they walk alone in the gardens, too far for the Spider’s web to stretch in their shadows.

Elia warns her of Lord Tywin’s wrath, and then smiles as though she has said nothing at all.

**VIII.**

She weds a stranger in the Great Sept, sunlight shattering into a thousand rainbows as Prince Rhaegar cradles her face in his too-soft hands and kisses her, marking her as his.

He marks her again later, holding his weight carefully above her and sighing too-sweet words into her hair, and it is not so bad. She has heard horror stories about being bedded, has seen the bruises and cuts that mar the Queen’s too-thin body after every night the King spends with her, and this is not that.

Perhaps, if she pleases him in bed, he might come to look at her the way Baelor looks upon Elia - but then, it must be a truly rare thing for a man to look upon his wife as if she is the rising sun, so Cat reminds herself to be more practical. 

**IX.**

Her belly and Elia’s swell together, but it is as if they are worlds apart. 

Pregnancy is easy, for Cat, or so she is told - her ankles swell a little, and the very notion of lamb makes her gorge rise, but she feels healthy, looks well, according to even worrisome Uncle Brynden, and is sure that she is carrying a boy. 

Elia, her only friend among all the ladies given to her upon her marriage, is confined to bed on the orders of one of her husband’s many maesterly relations, and all her strength and health seems to disappear into the massive roundness of her belly. 

“They think she may die,” Baelor says, voice rough and smile conspicuously absent. “Forgive me, Princess, if you are absent from my prayers - I fear Elia will need them a great deal more than you.”

**X.**

Elia bleeds a son into the world as Cat births a daughter, and laughs and laughs when Cat goes to her, in the aftermath.

“Oh, my sweet little silverfish,” Elia says, too thin and too frail but blessedly alive. “They have already decided that your girl and my boy ought to wed, haven’t they?”

They have, and it was Baelor who told Cat so, not Rhaegar, who named their daughter Rhaenys and then disappeared to Summerhall to brood. 

“No princess can ever truly keep her children to herself, Catelyn,” Elia says, gentle and precise as a surgeon’s knife. “I am sorry that you had to learn that lesson so late in life.”

Cat is only eight-and-ten, in the earliest days of her life, and wonders what other pains may yet come because of her still-new title.


End file.
